“I’m asking a reasonable price,” Elkin kept repeating in a tedious voice. “You won’t find a private apartment anywhere else in Moscow. The house has a telephone, a stove in the kitchen, a storeroom, and a bathroom. You’ll need a bathroom for your daughter.”

“But you’re asking more in rent than I earn!”

Eventually, Klim knocked the price down to a thousand dollars. United Press agreed to give him an advance on his future salary, and he moved into the apartment on Chistye Prudy.

That evening, a tousle-headed old man dressed in a torn padded jacket appeared at Klim’s door and introduced himself in a deep voice, “My name’s Afrikan. I’m the yard keeper here. And this old girl is Snapper.” He pointed to a fat white dog skulking at his felt boots. “She’s our guard dog. We’ve brought you a present, see? We thought you might need something to sit on to play the piano.” He held out a stool cobbled together from pieces of birch wood.

Klim gave the yard keeper a ruble, and Afrikan promised he would make three more stools for “his excellency” so that Klim could receive visitors.

“Did you see our new tenant, Snapper?” he muttered admiringly as they went downstairs. “A prince—a Soviet prince! I thought there were no more of his kind left.”

The dog whined as if in agreement. The new tenants had won her respect straight away as Kitty had treated Snapper to the skin from her salami.

3 BOOK OF THE DEAD

United Press has more than a thousand clients throughout the world, and every day, I have to send dispatches to New York, London, Berlin, and Tokyo. Then my cables are sorted and sent out to the local papers—our subscribers.

It turns out that, as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, finding a story is a devil of a job. All the material sent out by the Press Department consists of dull accounts of government sessions and decrees, so I have to rely on my own wits.

I was wrong to think that Soviet citizens would be happy to speak to me if I showed them a press pass. Foreigners in Moscow are kept apart from the local population not only by the language barrier but also by the fear of the OGPU. After all my years abroad, I have developed a slight foreign accent, and besides that, my clothes give the game away completely, so people here are wary of me as they are with any “guest from overseas.”

The only Soviet citizens prepared to talk to me are the simplest souls. Yesterday, I interviewed a delegate to the All-Union Communist Party Congress from the Yakutia in the east of Siberia. I asked him what they were voting on, and it turned out he knew nothing about politics whatsoever but was so grateful to the Party that he was willing to approve anything.

“Before the revolution, I was nothing but a reindeer herder,” he explained. “The Party brought me up in the world. I’ve come to Moscow! Why would I go against them?”

He wandered around the gilded corridors of the Tsar’s palace that had once played host to royal receptions, putting out a finger to touch the huge mirrors and laughing in delight.

“Now I’ve seen everything!” he said as we parted. “I can go to my grave happy.”

The censor didn’t like my interview with the reindeer herder.

“What is this?” Weinstein said, frowning when I brought him the papers to sign. “We sent you a communiqué. Isn’t that enough for you?”

The communiqué had been on the subject of “the fight against political bias in the interests of improving the organizational work of the Party.”

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get Weinstein to pass my article.

“We don’t know yet if we can count on you,” he said. “Don’t think of taking any liberties before you have our trust.”

4

There are around forty foreign correspondents in Moscow. We visit each other often to dance, play poker, and exchange gossip. The strict censorship and the dearth of information only heighten the thrill of the chase for us. We all compete to see who can be the first to dig up some story and send it out to a foreign press office.

It may not be as prestigious to work in the USSR as in Europe, but my journalist colleagues all agree that they wouldn’t change Soviet Russia for anything. We enjoy unheard-of privileges here: we earn huge salaries by local standards, live in private apartments, and have access to embassy doctors and cooperative stores of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs where you can buy coffee, cocoa, different cheeses, and even exotic fruits. We’re not afraid of all the local petty tyrants or the secret police. After all, we can leave the country at any moment.

There’s a word for what we have—FREEDOM, the same freedom that was a cherished dream for several generations of Russian revolutionaries. Oddly enough, since 1917, the only people in the USSR who enjoy any sort of freedom are the foreign diplomats and journalists.

Even high-ranking Party officials are not immune to high-handed treatment from those at the top. A few days ago, I rang the former Central Committee member, Grigory Zinoviev, who, like Trotsky, has been placed under house arrest. When I asked him how he was, he said in a trembling voice, “Wait a minute. I need to have a word with my comrades.”

Without permission from his superiors, he can’t even complain of a cold. Outside his gilded cage, he has nowhere to run.

No other job I have had has aroused such a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. Soviet Russia is an extraordinary amalgam of the most benighted superstition and ignorance and the most advanced ideas, inspired creativity, and belief in the future. Despite everything, many people believe that here, in the USSR, it will be possible to build a new world, a world in which all the dreams of mankind will somehow be realized.

I am going to public lectures at the university, and I am struck by the intelligence and inventiveness of Soviet scholars. Architects are designing extraordinary buildings, Sergei Eisenstein is making astonishing films, and meanwhile, the crudest, most vile propaganda is being disseminated on all sides. The disenfranchised are being hounded mercilessly, and nobody seems capable of an ounce of fellow feeling. There’s a lot of talk of a “sacred struggle” or a “sacred war,” and it seems that the majority of the population approve.

My biggest problem though is that I have no time to search for Nina. Life here is a constant mad rush: my telephone never stops ringing, couriers from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs are always bringing new communiqués, and I keep having to run off somewhere to attend some event or other.

While I am away, Afrikan is keeping an eye on Kitty, who has already decided she wants to be a yard keeper when she grows up. Now her favorite game is sweeping the floor, muttering in a deep voice, “The Russian people have gone to the dogs. New this, new that—you mark my words, the only thing that comes of new boots is aching feet.”

Kitty has also become friendly with Snapper. The two of them share an interest in hunting out the boot grease, which Afrikan hides. It is made with bacon fat. Snapper can sniff it out, Kitty gets it out, and they both have a treat.

I have been around all the kindergartens in the area and found out a number of shocking things: The nursery teacher in the Golden Fish makes the children stay out in the freezing cold on purpose so that they get sick. The less children she has to look after every day, the less work for her. The nanny in the Rowan Tree tells the children she can take her eyes out and put them up on a high shelf so that they can see everything that is going on. The thought of these eyes, separated from their owner, is enough to induce nervous hiccups in the children.

In the third kindergarten, a good one, there are no free places, and in the fourth, they refused to take Kitty because she was a foreigner. Apparently, the director was afraid my daughter was some tiny spy who might force her to disclose important strategic information about her high chairs and bibs.

I advertised for a helper: a responsible woman who spoke fluent English with teacher training, typing skills, and excellent references, good with children, and a good knowledge of Moscow in case I had to send her off on some errand. I also stipulated that she should be able to cook and clean and take on the running of a household.

It soon became apparent that angels of this sort are simply not to be found. Even if they did exist, they would hardly be tempted by the modest salary I was offering of thirty rubles and the tiny storeroom in which I hoped to install my new helper.

Seibert told me that in any case, I would not be allowed to hire outside help—apparently, you need special permission to do so.

“The Soviet authorities want to know what goes on in the houses of foreigners,” Seibert said. “So, they’ll send you from pillar to post for all sorts of official documents. And then, when they’ve finally weakened your morale, they’ll plant an OGPU agent in your house.”

“What about your Lieschen,” I asked, remembering his maid. “Does she work for the OGPU too?”

“Naturally,” said Seibert. “But she’s very fond of me, all the same.”

5

Afrikan appeared at the entrance to Klim’s room accompanied by a dark-browed girl in a peasant coat and a paisley headscarf.

“I’ve brought someone to see you, sir,” he said.

The girl held a rolled mattress under her arm, a knapsack on her back, and from her elbow hung a string of ring-shaped rolls.

“Hello, mister prince, sir,” said the girl, bowing from the waist.

Klim looked quizzically at Afrikan. “And who might this be?”

“A serving girl for you, that’s who,” he said. “Her name is Kapitolina. She’s a fool of a girl, I grant you, but you’ll find she’s a hard worker. And she’s got a certificate.”

The certificate was a “Certification of the Right to Operate a Stove and Boiler,” and it stated that Comrade Kapitolina Ignatevna Kozlova was “trained in the rules of operation of heating appliances and in safety procedures.”

“She can watch the little one,” said Afrikan, “and cook you breakfast. And she’s handy with a needle too. She’s my own niece, from Biruylevo village—I can vouch for her. She came to the city to earn money for her dowry, but mind you don’t pay her anything—it’s against the law unless you get permission. Instead, just get her a nice piece of cloth the next time you’re at that cooperative of yours. And if anyone comes from the Labor Inspectorate, you can tell them she’s visiting me and helping you out.”

Klim looked the blushing serving girl up and down. “Do you know Moscow well?” he asked her.

“I do indeed!” she exclaimed. “It’s the best city on earth. This is the third time I’ve been. There’s so much to see!”

“Can you read and write?”

Kapitolina hung her head, her brow furrowed.

Afrikan took Klim aside. “Look at her!” he whispered, gesturing toward Kapitolina’s generous buttocks. “Time was, you’d have had to keep a fine girl like that under lock and key. But now there are no men in the village to speak of—half of them dead in the war, and nothing left but the scrapings of the pot: old men, drunks, and cripples. Without a dowry, no decent man will take a wife.”

“Is your niece good with children?” asked Klim.

“She has five younger brothers and looked after the lot of them, and not one of them died.”

“Uncle Afrikan tells me you’ll let me live in the storeroom,” said Kapitolina. “If that’s true, I’ll do anything you like: I’ll wash your dishes with my tears, whatever you say.”

“I think that would be going a little too far,” said Klim, and he asked her to make a start on the washing right way. Kitty hadn’t a single clean pair of stockings left.

6

It could hardly be said that things began to run smoothly with Kapitolina’s arrival in the house, but life took on added interest.

Kapitolina brought her possessions with her from the village—a huge metal-bound chest and a large icon so soot-blackened that the image of the saint it depicted was all but invisible.

“Who’s that?” asked Kitty.

“That’s my little god,” Kapitolina said affectionately. That same evening, she taught Kitty to kneel before the icon and prostrate herself before it, which Kitty enjoyed hugely.

On top of the chest Kapitolina laid a mattress that had been stuffed with old banknotes—worthless since the currency reform. During the war, her father had earned a pile of money selling straw at inflated prices, and he had hidden it all in the mattress, intending it to serve as a dowry for his daughter.